Financing Strategies To Support Comprehensive, Community-Based Services for Children and Families.

O'Brien, Mary M.

Critical to the success of current efforts to reform and restructure education and other community supports and services to improve the lives of children and their families is the way in which they are financed. This report of The Finance Project presents an overview of eight initiatives that have overcome some of the barriers created by turf issues and rigid categorical funding streams by bringing funds together across programmatic lines to support the development of more comprehensive community-based services. Information is based upon telephone interviews with key contacts, review of documents provided by the contacts and a general literature review, and follow-up interviews with state or county staff. Following an introduction, the report describes four approaches to reform: (1) state support of local collaboratives; (2) state polling of out-of-home care funds; (3) state initiatives as locally driven; and (4) pooled funds for multi-agency children. The report follows with profiles of initiatives in Missouri, West Virginia, Virginia, Maryland, Iowa, California, Ohio, and Oregon which illustrate the above approaches to reform. The report maintains that the central strength of the initiatives is that they have provided opportunities for interagency collaboration, which help build interagency understanding and willingness to work together. Another strength of the initiatives is their appeal to ideologues on both ends of the political spectrum. The report concludes with a list of issues to be considered further. Three appendices include descriptions of other initiatives, contact information for the profiled initiatives, and a resource list. Contains 16 references. (KB)